(This is the final in a five-part series)
Sometime later in 1997, along with the arrival of cooler weather and light rain in San Francisco came the final plans for a house-cleaning at Wired Inc. The in-house coup d'é·tat would result in the removal of scores of people, including the founders Louis Rossetto and Jane Metcalfe.
In their stead, the company was going to be dismantled and sold off in pieces. The founders would be rewarded with a fair amount of compensation for their efforts, so they would be “fine.“ Not so much everyone else.
Near the top of the corporate hit list was my name. The very fact that made me irreplaceable in the old order — my relationship with Louis — made me all too disposable in the new one.
I was to be replaced, naturally, by one of the worst sycophants always clamoring for my time in one-on-ones.
So, on a late afternoon when the sun was going down to the west, suddenly and strangely there were no further meetings on my calendar. It was wide open. Then I was summoned to Louis’s office.
I walked in to see three people waiting, none of smiling. Just three senior execs stiff and grim in manner. I was thanked for my service, given a small severance check, and summarily dismissed.
Louis was one of the three and he looked immensely sad. But he had nothing to say. This was not of his doing. And that, I suppose, is the end of my story at Wired.
Unlike most of the other difficult transitions in my life, I had prepared myself emotionally as much as possible for this one. I’d packed up my family pictures and prepared my goodbye message. As I drove away from 660 Third Street, however, with tears in my eyes, I realized that you never can fully prepare for losing someone or something you love.
EPILOGUE
Perhaps the most significant accomplishment during my tenure on Third Street was Wired News, which survived the purge in 1997 and exists to this day.
And in one of life’s strange ironic twists, my oldest daughter, who would soon become an award-winning journalist herself, worked as as an intern at Wired News during the first decade of the new millennium.
Apparently none of her colleagues knew that her father had been one of the executives involved in creating their company or what that experience had been like.
Many years later, now that our society has become divided by conspiracy theories, fake news and social media demagogues, I remember how hard in the 1990s a few of us tried to prevent that outcome.
I’d be less than truthful if I said we fully anticipated how bad the media collapse would turn out to be. We saw the danger signs, but we could not imagine the world as it’s turned out to be.
The problem is once the old media world — like Humpty Dumpty — teetered and fell off of the great digital wall of the Internet and burst into a thousand pieces, how could we ever put it together again?
The answer is, sadly, I don’t think we can.
(Dedicated to all the Wiredlings, especially John, Mary and Susanna.)
HEADLINES:
'No Kings' protests against Trump take place across US ahead of military parade (BBC)
A weekend of protests in the U.S. (Reuters)
Anti-Trump demonstrators crowd streets, parks and plazas across the US. Organizers say millions came (AP)
No Kings protests Bay Area: What the massive crowd in San Francisco looked like (SFC)
Photos: "No Kings" protests take over downtown Chicago (Axios)
The Shame of Trump’s Parade (Atlantic)
At-large suspect identified in targeted shooting of Minnesota lawmakers (WP)
After Sitting Out the Iran Attack, U.S. Steps In to Help Israel Intercept Missiles (WSJ)
Iran and Israel continue strikes; imminent nuclear talks called off, official says (WP)
Much of Iran’s Nuclear Program Remains After Israel’s Strikes. At Least for Now. (NYT)
A painful wait in Ukraine (Reuters)
2024 Broke the Democrats. Can They Put Themselves Back Together? (Reveal)
Suspect in Hortman’s assassination visited international hotspots, has ties to private security firms (MPR)
ChatGPT Tells Users to Alert the Media That It Is Trying to ‘Break’ People: Report (Gizmodo)
Google reportedly plans to cut ties with Scale AI (TechCrunch)
Meta AI users confide on sex, God and Trump. Some don’t know it’s public. (WP)
Trump Mouths Lyrics To ‘Happy Birthday’ While National Anthem Plays (The Onion)
MUSIC:
Kacey Musgraves - Follow Your Arrow (Live at the Grand Ole Opry)
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